Finally, a hybrid that’s not boring

Originally published: June 2, 2011

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I think I may have found a hybrid that doesn’t totally suck.

Indeed, it may actually be the first hybrid to expand its appeal beyond the diehard ecoweenie. At the very least, getting behind the wheel of Hyundai’s Sonata Hybrid doesn’t feel like the automotive equivalent of converting to Scientology.

I give Hyundai all these props with a hesitancy and surprise borne of a decade-long skepticism regarding the entire concept of an electric motor and gasoline engine powering a car simultaneously. My antipathy for the complicated little contraptions is well documented. For those who have somehow forgotten (or, more likely, ignored) my continuous rants, the reason I despise the little weeniemobiles is:

A) They are unnecessarily complicated. Elegant engineering is simple engineering and hybrids are generally a mess of electric motors, planetary gears and enough computational electronics for a moon landing.

B) To generate the fuel economy savings promised, they must be driven in a very specific manner: If the road to “clean” automobiles is predicated on a wholesale change in the way the average motorist drives, then we are in for a dirty planet.

C) Hybrids get lousy highway fuel economy, unless they are driven at speeds that would annoy all but the most pious of converts (see point B). If not, they suck back almost as much gasoline as a conventional automobile of the same size. The new Hyundai addresses point A in part with an elegant solution that marries the best of Honda’s hybrid engineering with a few clever additions of its own. Anyone — even a dedicated enviroweenie — who has driven a Prius or Insight has damned for all eternity their confounded continuously variable (CVT) transmissions. Any time you need substantial acceleration, those bloody CVTs hold the four-cylinder engines at a constantly high rpm to wring every last bit of performance out of their puny pistons. The problem is that a little four-banger revving at a constant 6,000 rpm is the only sound known that can make you wish for a whiney “nagivator.”

Hyundai simply equipped the Sonata Hybrid with a conventional six-speed automatic transmission. Even more novel is that Hyundai took a page out of Honda’s playbook and conveniently mounted the electric drive motor to the powertrain. Unlike the Honda solution, however, which sees the Insight’s electric motor mounted directly to the engine’s crankshaft, Hyundai built it into the transmission, where it replaces the torque converter. The advantage is that, unlike the Honda, the Sonata’s electric motor can operate independently of the gas engine (like a Prius). Remember axiom A: The most elegant solution is the simplest. Rather than reinvent the wheel, Hyundai’s rather clever engineers simply moved it.

And the electric motor certainly does allow the Sonata to be driven independently of the gas engine. The Sonata will easily cruise — for brief periods — at 100 kilometres an hour in pure electric mode. In a couple of instances (downhill, for example), the little EV light even flickered on at 120 km/h. The driving was remarkably glitch-free as well. Oh, the transmission tended to upshift early to conserve gas. Ditto the throttle pedal, which has obviously been calibrated for a slow ramp-up so you really have to mat the pedal to get serious acceleration. But, and this is perhaps the Hyundai’s greatest advantage, it doesn’t feel like an overgrown golf cart.

As for points A and B, as you can read in the road test, in circumstances that had other hybrids I’ve tested sucking back the fuel — cruising, like almost everyone else on Ontario’s Hwy. 401, at 130 km/h — the Sonata still maintained decent gas mileage. I averaged about six litres per 100 kilometres at 110 km/h, seven at 120 and a little less than eight at 130.

The latter two figures are less than half a litre worse than the BMW 335d, admittedly a notably more sprightly car. Indeed, when I was driving in my normal rambunctious manner, I averaged about half a litre more in the electrified Sonata than in the turbodiesel Bimmer. The harder you drive, the greater the fuel economy advantage for diesel technology. And, if saving money is really your goal, buy a Chevrolet Cruze Eco, which gets about the same overall fuel economy and costs about $10,000 less. Nonetheless, the Sonata still delivered better performance — in terms of drivability and fuel consumption — than other hybrids I’ve tested.

Of course, in a perfect world, Hyundai would marry the best of both worlds and equip the Sonata with a turbodiesel as sophisticated as its hybrid technology. Such a beast might just achieve the magic combination of economy, performance and sportiness that would popularize hybrids beyond their current niche status. Make it a plug-in and it could be the Holy Grail of fuel consumption hybrid lovers have been promising for so long.